Because of Wu Wei's financial support regardless of the cost, Ansai's industry and commerce flourished in a short period of time, and the office hall of "Rishengchang" was crowded with people seeking project loans every day. There are a variety of these projects, ranging from small early shops to large coal mining, some of which are applied for according to their own strengths, and some of which are directly using the project plans provided by "Rishengchang". For example, there is a project plan provided by "Rishengchang", which roughly means that the firm provides a formula for an item called "soap" and provides a long-term supply of raw materials. Applicants must demonstrate their ability to operate at scale and profitably, and previous experience in oil mills or wineries is preferred.

Once the application is successful, the applicant will be able to receive all-round support from "Rishengchang" from financing, raw material procurement to technical guidance, and can also get interest reduction discounts ranging from Cheng Dù to the number of hired workers. Because it has been screened when applying for the project, it is extremely rare for general operation to fail, and most of them can obtain huge profits, which also leads to more crowds. Naturally, many people in the yamen were also quite interested in this, and even Li Xianling and Sun Jiaoyu had paid attention to Wu Wei about several project loans. Wu Wei naturally knows the meaning of the string song and knows the meaning of the strings, anyway, there are a lot of projects under his name, and he immediately took out a number of dry shares, and engaged in the three industries in the name of the yamen.

As a result of the sharing of benefits, the government has given the green light to all industries in China, and they can avoid the suffering of exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes. And to Wu Wei's surprise, after the reputation of Ansai's heavy business spread, it attracted businessmen from all over the world to invest here, and virtually created a large number of employment opportunities for the local area. Of course, projects with huge potential and abundant profits, such as salt making and iron smelting, Wu Wei will not let others grasp them, and he will hold them firmly in the palm of his hand. Salt and iron in feudal society are strategic materials, and they are monopolized, so what profits can compare with this? Ansai is a small county with poor resources, and this aspect is almost blank, and Wu Wei has an official background, so he is a million profits and has a wide range of financial resources.

Speaking of which, there is a small episode that must be mentioned. Wu Wei organized his blacksmiths to open an iron-smelting workshop outside the city, and during the construction process, he was pleasantly surprised to find that among these people there were actually several small blast furnaces that could cultivate iron! In particular, there is a man named Li Shun who has been working as a stove in the government-run iron factory in Shanxi for several years! Although the appearance of the small blast furnace they built was simple and ridiculous in Wu Wei's eyes, it could indeed make iron! This made Wu Wei, an otaku with extremely poor hands-on ability, really shocked. Wu Wei filmed the whole process of the small blast furnace from the construction to the molten iron with his mobile phone and transmitted it to a popular forum in China, and the name of the post was "Ancient Iron Smelting --- Restoration of the Folk Iron Smelting Process in North China in the Late Ming Dynasty (with pictures and truth)". As soon as the post came out, it immediately caused a sensation, and it was on the headlines of the portal, just kidding, pure handmade iron, this guy is too fierce! Which family's rich second-generation idle eggs are hurting around there.

While the netizens were watching at the same time, they also discussed the process revealed in the picture, and the focus of the debate was whether this furnace really reflected the iron-smelting technology of the late Ming Dynasty. There are different opinions, and each has its own opinion, but the main thing is that it is indeed a little far away from the lives of the masses, and no one has ever played this thing. There are a few fierce quotations and classics, scolding Wu Wei to the blood, but their statement is also a little reasonable, the Ming Dynasty produced hundreds of thousands of tons of iron a year, and even Wu himself didn't believe it if it was made of this kind of earthen stove! But no one knows better than Wu Wei that this is indeed the technology of the Ming Dynasty, it really can't be true, the Ming Dynasty uncle who built the stove is still begging for a living under his own hands, does he dare to hide his secrets? asked Li Shun, and he insisted that the official workshop also used this kind of stove. Helplessly, no one believes it, Wu Wei has no choice but to insist that our post is about folk crafts, the folk know no, it is an ironmaking workshop in the countryside, and you can compare a modern black steelmaking plant in the countryside with Wuhan Iron and Steel Baosteel?

However, the critics did not criticize in vain, and still pointed out a lot of improvements, and some of them were able to greatly increase the output with a slight transformation of the technical level at the end of the Ming Dynasty, which made Wu feel relieved for this handicap party. For example, the regenerator, in fact, is to build a small regenerative space next to the small blast furnace, the principle Wu Wei does not understand, but to Li Shunyi, it didn't take much effort to make it, after the test can indeed cost less than 3 into charcoal, but also 2 into iron! This made everyone wonder if Wu Wei was a family heirloom iron factory. The regenerator is just that, and the high-speed blower improved by using variable speed gears saves manpower and greatly increases efficiency!

Although this has already made everyone admire Wu Wei to the ground, after all, it is still pig iron, not steel, which makes Wu Wei, a traverser, not very satisfied. The most critical aspect of steelmaking is the furnace temperature, and the refractory bricks used in the blast furnace for building steelmaking, the former can barely be reached after using regenerators, charcoal and new blowers, and the latter is not at all in this year! Although kaolin bricks and marble bricks can be found in the southern Jiangxi area of this era, it is obviously unreliable to drag the soil back to burn bricks from such a long distance.

Finally, under the construction of several netizens, Wu Weiyi gritted his teeth and pulled a cart of finished refractory bricks directly from Hyundai, the kind dedicated to steelmaking, it is said that the main material is cloud flake stone, and the furnace made of it is the most suitable for smelting domestic ores with high phosphorus and high sulfur. He pretended to mysteriously tell Li Shun about the improvement method of the simple steelmaking converter, stuffed him with a drawing and walked away, no way, let him move his mouth, and help to do it It was revealed in minutes, so he had to pretend to be profound. Unexpectedly, these craftsmen thought that Wu Wei's status was respected, and this style was no more reasonable, so they didn't even dare to ask the details, but a group of people took the drawings there day and night to carry out technical research, not to mention, according to what Wu Wei said, the steelmaking furnace was pounded out! In fact, it is not surprising that these people also have experience in cultivating iron furnaces, and there are many similarities in steelmaking and ironmaking technology, and steelmaking is actually the process of reducing the carbon content in iron. This process is difficult to say, simple and simple, some technical key points are just a layer of window paper, since the technology and materials are available, it is a matter of time before the steel is made, but this process is too fast, beyond Wu Wei's expectations.

When the first furnace of molten steel was successfully refined, the whole workshop was boiling, and some old craftsmen even shed tears. There is no doubt at all, the blazing white transpiring molten steel is different from the molten iron of Huang Liang at a glance, and it is as much as a thousand catties! It is no wonder that the craftsmen are excited, steel is much more difficult to refine than iron in these years, there are no refractory materials at the end of the Ming Dynasty, there is no regenerator and blower, it is impossible to directly "refine" the steel by oxidation, and can only use the steel frying method that is to use a willow stick to slowly stir the molten iron like a stir-fry to remove the excess carbon in the molten iron to obtain steel. But this method is quite unreliable, because the willow rod can easily be melted into the molten iron, which will make the carbon content higher, and even if the steel is smelted with luck, the yield is very low, and most of them are low-quality high-carbon steel. The more widely used steelmaking law is the forging method, that is, the pig iron block is burned red and constantly forged with an iron hammer, "one forging and one light, until the tired forging and the two catties are not reduced, then the pure steel is also". As you can imagine, this method is even less productive. Therefore, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the annual output of steel in the country was only 2 or 3,000 tons, and the per capita steel output was only half a tael, which was not enough to make a fruit knife! Because of this, the price of steel is ten to twenty times the price of pig iron!

Wu Weijian's steelmaking small blast furnace certainly belongs to the simplest kind, Rao is so, the output is not comparable to the old-fashioned iron-making furnace of this era, a furnace can produce thousands of catties of steel, and the daily output can reach more than 5,000 catties! A blast furnace can produce for half a year every year, so that the annual output is more than 500 tons. Although for Wu Wei, this number is only unsatisfactory, but this is enough for Li Shun and a group of blacksmiths to worship Wu Wei like a god, God, the steel output of a blast furnace is enough to be worth the sum of the whole province of Shanxi! And it is not much more difficult to build this steel-making furnace than the old-fashioned iron-making furnace, if you can build one, you can build more, if you make a big move, it is just a common thing to start ten or eight blast furnaces, so that the output and profit can be imagined!

In these years, any kind of technology that can significantly improve productivity is a secret, either passed on to men or women, or in the hands of large government-run workshops, not to mention such a subversive technology, it is not an exaggeration to call it a militaristic heavy weapon! And such an important method of steelmaking, Wu Dianshi taught himself lightly, and this trust alone is enough to make people die for him! And although he is the house slave of Wu Dianshi, the master of Dianshi still admits that he is "personal" (the name of the Ming Dynasty with personal shares), and in the future, this steelmaking workshop will be rich and rich, and he is afraid that he will be able to make a lot of profits! The blacksmiths were all excited and motivated to think of this.

In fact, Wu Wei is not worried about the leakage of steelmaking methods at all, because although the reason of this steelmaking furnace is simple, it has a dead hole, that is, the refractory bricks used in the furnace are not available in this era. This problem is unsolvable in this era, and if you force it with clay bricks commonly used in this era, then wait for it to burn down.

With this small blast furnace, even a small iron mine in the suburbs of Ansai will also have a place to use, this mine reserves are not large, the grade is not high, it is commonly known as the "chicken nest mine". But that is from the perspective of later generations, if the business is good, it can still produce tens of thousands of tons of iron ore a year, and it is more than enough to supply Wu Wei as the raw material for this blacksmith workshop. The local coal mines are of very good quality, basically export-grade anthracite, and the phosphorus content is very low, which is a natural steelmaking material, which is not found anywhere else, and the cost is several times lower than charcoal under large-scale mining. All of a sudden, the right time, place and people were all prepared, and a mini coal and steel consortium at the end of the Ming Dynasty gradually took shape.

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